Harsh Road Tests Ensure Chevy Pothole Perseverance

When someone says, “Winter is coming,” to you, it normally means months of ice, snow, and cold weather. For your car, it means something a bit different, especially come springtime—potholes. With the slowly thawing weather making your roads look like Swiss cheese, Chevy has come prepared with a road test that helps make its cars resilient to the effects of potholes.

Located at the General Motors Milford Proving Ground, carefully engineered roads are built for Chevy to test vehicles, such as the Malibu and Silverado, with varying pothole ranges from mild to severely bone-shaking. These intentionally poor conditions allow engineers to help create Chevy designs that will do less damage to tires, wheels, and suspensions.

“We have a wide variety of road surfaces that simulate real-world road conditions around the globe,” said Frank Barhorst, supervisor of the Product Usage Measurements and Applications group at the Proving Ground. “The range of test road surfaces goes from good to bad, so that we can find the most balanced condition for each vehicle we develop—and believe me, we’ve created some of the worst potholes you’ve ever seen.”

Because there’s no specific technology that can help a driver miss each and every pothole they will encounter, Chevrolet makes sure their models are built with specific traits that will reduce the vibrations generated by sudden, harsh impacts. They’ve also made sure their tire technology is geared towards the ability to withstand potholes as well.

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